SimAnt

SimAnt is a ant simulation game by developed and published by Maxis and released on MS-DOS in 1991, and later ported to various other platforms. You play as ants in a colony trying to expand the size of your colony across a yard and into a house. The game also comes with an experimental mode and a thick manual with encyclopedic information about ants. Like a lot of the early Sim games, it's more of a toy than a game.

I bought SimAnt, not just because I really liked Sim games, but also because I always thought ants were really interesting. I found out they're even more interesting from this game, especially from the manual.

Contents

Status

I own this game for DOS and have beaten both the game's quick and full game modes.

Review

Overall: 6/10

Best Version: DOS

— This section contains spoilers! —

Good

The game nicely embodies the Sim mentality allowing for lots of experimentation. You can dig your own ant tunnels, lay your own chemical trails, pit ants against each other, etc.

It was nice that the designers actually included a campaign-style game where you can actually beat it. And the plot, trying to infest an entire yard and house, is very thematic.

The game has a lot of details that teach you about ants like the ability to modify their birthing caste, sharing food, chemical trails, etc.

The addition of the house setting, with new graphics and hazards, was icing on the cake.

The various hazards, rain, lawn mower, spider, ant lion, kitchen, etc. make the game very life-like.

The graphics are actually quite nice for a PC game of the day, the designers wisely chose to modify the EGA palette, a rare occurrence in this time.

The in-game tutorial is very helpful.

The manual is amazing and features, not just details about the game, but a miniature encyclopedia of ants.

The addition of dialogue boxes is a hilarious addition to the game.

The ability to take control of the spider is a neat idea, although, it seems unfair in the full game.

The game has a pretty impressive windowed interface for a 1991 DOS game.

Bad

Over all, there just isn't that much to do in the game. After a single play-through of the full game, and an hour in experiment mode, you've done everything the game has to offer.

The full game is really easy, and can be beaten in a about a half hour with only a rudimentary understanding of the game.

The path finding is pretty bad, especially in the nest. The yellow ant often freaks out when he can't get to where you click.

A difficulty setting would really help the game since it's so easy. I played a game where I constantly killed my yellow ant over and over again, and my colony still grew faster than the red's.

The game doesn't actually track the ants in other areas of the map. I understand why they had to do this on old computers, but it doesn't do a very good general estimate. A new colony, after only a little while of game play, can jump to 200 ants when you're not in it. However, if you stay in the map, it will take much longer to get to that count. Also, when you're in a map, the red colony can increase in size even when you have access to the only food.

While you get to dig your own nest, the AI ants don't utilize it effectively. They drop food and eggs randomly around, making it very difficult to make a strategic layout unless you want to sit in the nest all day and move stuff around. I would have preferred a way for you to direct other ants to keep eggs in one section, food in another, guard and area, etc.

Even though most of the game takes place in a backyard lawn, there is very little grass. This was probably decided because too many obstacles would make movement frustrating, but this means you're looking at a dull brown screen most of the time.

For some reason, in experiment mode, you can't remove walls once they're built, which makes them problematic to use.

Ugly

Nothing.

Media

Box Art

There were two main art styles for SimAnt, the original and the re-released Classics version. While I like both, I prefer the original, which is the one I own.

The original box art shows a CGI black ant encountering a red ant. The background of the house and the owner mowing is one of the hazards in the game. Pretty good box art, and it gives you an idea of the game's theme. This was used on DOS, Amiga, and Windows.

The Classics art was used on the re-release of the game, and on later ports. It features a far more cartoony, almost clipart, style. It also more-accurately shows the side-view underground display with green globs of food and the spider and ant-lion.